Senate floor debate is happening right now on the Buffett Rule, with a procedural vote expected later today. And Republican leaders have made clear how they will justify filibustering the common sense position that all multimillionaires should pay a higher tax rate than their secretaries.

We’ve got a $15 trillion debt. Some call it the most predictable crisis in history. We have the largest tax increase in the history of the country looming that will hit every single American who pays income taxes in less than 9 months.

Well, President Obama looked at the options in front of him, sat down with his political advisors, and he said, you know what, let’s go with the poll-tested tax increase on investment and job creation that won’t fix anything and won’t pass anyway, instead of actually doing something about the debt and the deficit.

Of course, if you are believer in math, any “tax increase” is by definition doing something about the debt and deficit.

Somehow it is Obama who has a strange foreign notion that it is unfair when multimillionaires pay lower tax rates than middle class workers, just because they get their income from investments and not labor.

[There’s] a growing bipartisan consensus not only about the existence of these problems but also about the proper solution. Just about everybody agrees that comprehensive tax reform would help turn this economy around … The problem is, we’ve got a President who seems more interested in pitting people against each other than he is in actually doing what it takes to face these challenges head on and to solve them in a bipartisan manner

Do I even need to waste time debunking this lunacy? There is no “bipartisan consensus” on tax reform.

There is a Democratic Party that believes any deficit reduction package needs higher taxes on the wealthy to avoid unnecessary pain on the middle class and the poor. There is a Republican Party that believes we are heading for a fiscal apocalypse, but that is no reason to ask multimillionaires to cough up one more penny.

Further, let’s not forget the President has already struck two bipartisan compromises on the budget. One accepted more tax cuts for the wealthy which he opposed to avoid abrupt hikes on the middle class during a nascent recovery. Another accepted more spending cuts than he wanted to avoid a calamitous refusal to increase the debt ceiling. Sen. McConnell is aware of this, because he voted for both of these.

And let’s remember that “we have the largest tax increase in the history of the country” coming “in less than 9 months” because of the budget gimmicks that McConnell voted for 10 years ago — putting an expiration date on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to mask their long-term cost.

Republicans aren’t even trying to make a honest case against the Buffett Rule before they filibuster it. Something tells me voters are going to notice.

Co-director Robert Borosage calls today’s vote on the Buffett Rule legislation “a no-brainer. The Senators who oppose this minimal standard have shred all sense of decency. Only the corrupt or the morally bankrupt could vote to protect the ability of the richest Americans to pay a lower rate of taxes than the rest of us.” Read the press release.

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About Bill Scher

Bill Scher is the Online Campaign Manager at Campaign for America's Future, and the executive editor of LiberalOasis.com. He is the author of Wait! Don't Move To Canada!: A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America, a regular contributor to Bloggingheads.tv and host of the LiberalOasis Radio Show weekly podcast. He has opinion articles that have been published by the New York Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Omaha World-Herald, and has made appearances on CNN, MSNBC and NPR among other TV and radio outlets.